The entertainment industry has become a ubiquitous part of modern society. Movie and television studios commonly spend millions of dollars to produce movies and television shows that the public spends billions of dollars each year to consume. People rely on movie and television media to provide entertainment, but also as a source of current events, popular culture, and even education.
Over time, technology enabling production of movies and television shows has improved dramatically, allowing the entertainment industry to sustain the public's demand for new media. Today, entertainment media can be delivered to consumers through a wide variety of mediums including cable and satellite receivers, personal computers, or mobile devices in electronic communication with wireless data networks. In addition, video and audio can be recorded and delivered to consumers in extremely high definition and with extremely high clarity.
In order to ensure the highest possible quality final product, audio and video are typically recorded separately and then combined into a single product during editing and post-production. In most cases, the device that operates to record high quality video is not the same device that is used to record high quality audio. In other words, for sophisticated movie and television productions, the audio is commonly recorded as a separate data signal from the video. After all, even if an audio recording device were physically attached to or integrated within a camera, on a typical movie or television set the camera operator often cannot position the camera in the ideal location to record dialogue or surrounding sounds while simultaneously filming the environment from the appropriate angle or distance. Furthermore, audio and video are typically recorded from many different perspectives and sources. For example, microphones are often physically attached to each of the actors and also positioned nearby, while cameras are positioned at various distances and angles to capture close-ups of the actors as well as the surrounding environment.
Because of the complexity of recording high quality audio and video, in many cases, movie and television productions employ entirely separate crews to record audio and video. The audio and video crews are then supervised and coordinated by various members of the production crew such as directors, script supervisors, or producers. Audio and video are then edited and combined by editors during the post-production process. The process of ensuring that audio and video are synchronized in the final production can be time-consuming and complicated, which increases production costs. Furthermore, providing communication between members of the production crew during the production process can be complicated to manage and require many different expensive electrical components that must be carried or controlled by members of the production crew.